Did I buy enough ram for running Photoshop 7??

Kaieye

Platinum Member
Oct 9, 1999
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I built a p4 2.8 533 fsb speed pc with 512 megs of ram and a 200 gig hard drive. Would another 512 megs of ram added be noticable for running photoshop 7 or is it fine??

TIA!


Kaieye
 

tallman45

Golden Member
May 27, 2003
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Yes an extra 512 will make a big difference. If you can pick up another hard drive (small is fine) and designate it as the scratch disk for even better performance.
 

heartsurgeon

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2001
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you have plenty of memory

try what you have, and then decide if you need to open more images

do you have a 20-21 inch monitor? image maniupulation is about more than just ram and gig's..it's about productivity..you may be much more productive by spending your money on a bigger screen.

i run photoshop a lot, 512 megs, 80 gig hd, 20" lcd...it works fine for me..
bigger, faster is better with photoshop, but unless you have a unlimited budget, you will want to maximize the return on your investment. with the hardware you decribed, if your itching to spend more money, be sure to get a large screen (1600 x 1200 minimum imho)
 

socks

Junior Member
Feb 15, 2004
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I think the best performance increasing product I've purchased for my PC has been my 36gb WD Raptor 10k rpm drive. Put your OS on it, and set your PS scratch disk to it. It'll fly! I use Photoshop CS and it starts for me in about 6-7 seconds. I also have 512mb of RAM. The extra ram would help if you A> have lots of images open at the same time B> work in very high resolutions C> do print design at 300dpi D> multi-task
 

mooojojojo

Senior member
Jul 15, 2002
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Statements that PS will work faster if you have more RAM are plain untrue and not thought through.

If PS is the only running application, you'll have to work on a pretty large PSD to need more than 512MB. Try working with what you currently have and see how it goes. If you are just going to work on web-targeted designs (ie. not exceeding much above 990x900px files) and you don't multitask much (say have Illustrator, PS and Flash opened at once) you are quite fine. It's all about your work habits. But if you are serious about work, then perhaps you do have a lot of apps opened at once, and another stick won't hurt.

That said - as already mentioned there are quite a few important things to consider besides RAM and CPU MHz. Monitor is very important for graphic work, as is a fast harddrive. But one thing almost always overlooked is a graphic tablet. Even if you don't draw or paint on your workstation, but do graphic work, the tablet is going to help more than RAM or anything else could ever do.
 

Overkast

Senior member
Aug 1, 2003
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If you're web designing and only need to produce low-res (72 dpi) graphics, then yes 512 is sufficient. But if you're working for print design and need to produce 300 dpi+ graphics, then you should absolutely upgrade to 1024 Megs of RAM. You'll thank yourself every day.
 

vshah

Lifer
Sep 20, 2003
19,003
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for hi res files, at least 1gb of ram is invaluable. for example, individual frame editing on a filmstrip file from premiere...the psd file is a few gigs at least...
but like everyone's said...it all depends on how you're going to be using it.
-Vivan
 

AIWGuru

Banned
Nov 19, 2003
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When I so much as OPEN a 4096x3072 image, it takes about 700 megs. So, it depends on how large the images you're working on are. That's a brand new system and you're going to want to hang onto it for a while so you might just as well go for the gig.
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
27,254
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Originally posted by: AIWGuru
When I so much as OPEN a 4096x3072 image, it takes about 700 megs. So, it depends on how large the images you're working on are. That's a brand new system and you're going to want to hang onto it for a while so you might just as well go for the gig.
Ditto, I agree....

 

Sideswipe001

Golden Member
May 23, 2003
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I concur here too. We do a LOT of printing of banners for trade shows, and constantly are opening pictures that are hundreds of MB in size. One of our poor employees is doing it on a Duron 1 Ghz with 512 MB of RAM ( Management won't approve a new computer for her) and it generally takes 5 mins or more to open a file. Many changes require her to sit for 45 seconds or so as well, as it applies changes.
 

Finnkc

Senior member
Jul 9, 2003
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I would say it depends on how 512mb does. For me I only do web graphics 99% of the time and the odd Image resize ... however fi you find things to be slugish with 512mb then yes I would go get more. If everything is fine and stuff opens, crops, resizes, renders, and mutli tasks well then why spend the money?
 

Overkast

Senior member
Aug 1, 2003
337
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Originally posted by: Sideswipe001
I concur here too. We do a LOT of printing of banners for trade shows, and constantly are opening pictures that are hundreds of MB in size. One of our poor employees is doing it on a Duron 1 Ghz with 512 MB of RAM ( Management won't approve a new computer for her) and it generally takes 5 mins or more to open a file. Many changes require her to sit for 45 seconds or so as well, as it applies changes.

I can't stand companies like that. Don't those idiots understand they're enduring more costs through productivity loss rather than just sucking up an initial 1-time fee of $2,000 or $3,000 for a high-end machine???

Sh!t, I built a sweet mid-to-high-end PC for just $1,400 and your co-worker would probably be just fine on this machine.

Your budget-cutting decision makers are morons.
 

batmanuel

Platinum Member
Jan 15, 2003
2,144
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Originally posted by: heartsurgeon
you have plenty of memory

try what you have, and then decide if you need to open more images

do you have a 20-21 inch monitor? image maniupulation is about more than just ram and gig's..it's about productivity..you may be much more productive by spending your money on a bigger screen.

i run photoshop a lot, 512 megs, 80 gig hd, 20" lcd...it works fine for me..
bigger, faster is better with photoshop, but unless you have a unlimited budget, you will want to maximize the return on your investment. with the hardware you decribed, if your itching to spend more money, be sure to get a large screen (1600 x 1200 minimum imho)

One slightly cheaper productivity booster is to go for dual monitors instead of one huge monitor (if your video card allows, of course). You can open up a lot workspace that way by moving a lot of pallets off to the secondary. For example, if I'm doing fine detail work on a pretty large image, it really helps to pull the Navigator pallet off to the secondary monitor and enlarge it a bit so I can move around with it faster and more accurately. As far as productivity goes, two 19" monitors beat a single 21" any day. Plus it seems like you really have to pay a really big premium for a 21" CRT that doesn't have any weird geometry issues.

Of course it all depends on what your card supports. Even if you don't have a dual-output card, you could probably get away with throwing in a cheap Matrox PCI card to run the monitor since the second monitor will probably never ever display any 3D graphics.
 

Dug

Diamond Member
Jun 6, 2000
3,469
6
81
Get more ram. I have 1 8x10 canvas open with 3 layers.
Email and IE open.

481MB in use.
As soon as I try doing something to thos layers I'm going over 512 and everything will come to a screetching halt.

 

Texun

Platinum Member
Oct 21, 2001
2,058
1
81
Originally posted by: Overkast
If you're web designing and only need to produce low-res (72 dpi) graphics, then yes 512 is sufficient. But if you're working for print design and need to produce 300 dpi+ graphics, then you should absolutely upgrade to 1024 Megs of RAM. You'll thank yourself every day.

I agree also. I've got one machine with 512 and one with a gig. Both are perfectly fine with small or 72 dpi images and using only a few layers, but scan and load an image at 300 or higher and you'll feel it in a big way then.

 

discostusback

Member
Jan 20, 2004
73
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haha at my school some people attempt to use photoshop with the pics from a new canon digital rebel with a 200mhz cpu and 64-92megs of ram thats with the pic quality on as high as it gets. whenever i see it i laugh